Don’t write off retail health clinics as the natural enemy. Instead, explore opportunities to cultivate partnerships with the increasingly popular clinics if you’re looking to add new patients. Non-physician practitioners (NPPs) employed at CVS MinuteClinics, which account for nearly half the nation’s retail clinics, ask patients whether they have a permanent primary care physician. If the answer is no, the NPP will give the patient a list of nearby primary care practices currently accepting new patients, according to a company spokesperson.

Respond to questions asked through patient portals within 24 hours to increase participation and the likelihood you’ll receive incentives for proposed stage 2 meaningful use measures. About 98% of patients who ask questions through York (Neb.) Medical Clinic’s patient portal receive answers on the same day, says Practice Administrator John Tritt. Timely responses are one way the 10-provider family medicine practice boosted portal participation to 1,500 patients.

Keep your practice from hemorrhaging thousands of dollars after a breach of protected health information (PHI) by encrypting your office’s most used devices – computers, copy and fax machines – for little to no money, experts say. Encryption, which is an electronic way of disguising information that is sent to or stored on a computer, can save your practice the time and expense that breaches have cost other providers.

Practices lost nearly $22 million in 2010 for denied post-operative care claims billed with modifier 55(post-operative management only) – mostly because of a lack of coordination with emergency room and out-of-town providers. The fact that a patient has to receive care from another provider out of state, poor communication between the out-of-town and local providers as well as rapid claims billing contribute to an overall 18% denial rate for Medicare claims with modifier 55 in 2010, experts say.

Is the annual wellness visit (AWV) included in the monthly capitation payment for dialysis patients?

Some practices that landed under the HHS Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG’s) microscope still came out unscathed thanks to thorough justification of their upper-level E/M selections. Practice managers for a few of the 1,700 doctors OIG identified as having selected a level 4 or a level 5 in at least 95% of all E/M claims in 2010 tell Part B News that they rarely see E/M denials.

Being able to give private-insurance patients a specific amount of money owed for a visit and pressing for payment are about to get much easier, as an Affordable Care Act (ACA) reform will require health plans to give you real-time insurance verification within 20 seconds of your request.

Fight back when your employee health insurance company tries to sock you with a large premium hike. If your employees have been relatively healthy, it’s likely the insurance company will reduce its increase. Practices rarely take that tactic, but it can work.

You could see payment delays for claims related to short hospital stays because of a CMS recovery auditors’ (RACs) demonstration program launching Aug. 27. While the RACs will focus first on Part A services, your providers’ claims and documentation may be scrutinized if the services rendered were clinically related to a patient’s short hospital stay, experts say.